The November and December movement in France marks a social and political turning point in our country. It was considered as the first wide workers' movement against world-wide applied economy that founds the "criteria of convergence" contained in Maastricht Treaty. It actually affects today's discussions around the conditions to be gathered for establishing the European currency (ECU) -the Euro. These discussions are taking place among the operators of Europe's politics and economy.
From the point of view of the proletariat, in spite and beyond the many disparities that the crisis keeps on causing and pursuing between active and unemployed workers, between public and private sector workers, between Francilians (inhabitants of the Parisian region -city of Paris and its suburbs) and Province workers, etc., this movement has indisputably brought back confidence in collective struggle, in the ability of the working class to unite about clear demands and give rise to a large stream of a peoples massive solidarity. In the meantime, among the more advanced workers, talks started about the limits and the failure of the capitalist system, both home and abroad (particularly in its European features) on one hand, and, on the other hand, about the necessary social alternative opposition. The strike pickets gave anew birth to discussions on May 68, on revolution, on what should better be put in place of capitalism and on socialism, even if there is a lot of confusion as to the concrete content of the aims and a lot of questioning over the means to be put forth for searching these objectives.
A few weeks before this great movement, our 4th Congress enabled us to deepen our understanding of the economical and political mechanisms of socialism. This was done on the basis of a historical and materialist analysis of the world's first socialist experience -the USSR- and of the reasons of its failure. Our party was hence ready, on the political and ideological levels, to take up the movement with prospects going beyond the denunciation of the reactionary politics applied by Chirac's government.
Published for "Unity & Struggle" readers, this article wants to draw the teachings that the movement offers and that seem essential in relation to present politics of financial oligarchy which lives everywhere more and more as a parasite on the back of society. Indeed, equivalent reforms are taking place in every country and employers and governments are, as well, drawing lessons from this movement. What happened in France is a valuable opposite illustration.
Once he left the steps of the "National Assembly" stand at which he had just been finishing to lay out his Social Welfare (commonly called "La Secu") reform project, Juppe, the Prime Minister encountered warm applauses. They came from the right wing deputies. The stock exchange witnessed a 2.6 % increase, hence approving him dearly. He also enjoyed with much delight the deception of the socialist deputies. Has he not, actually, robbed them of a few of their own propositions of reforming "La Secu", thus leaving them voiceless?! Along the ranks of the right wing deputies, parliament ultra majority, there was euphoria. Every tendency overcome, they welcomed Prime Minister's courage in having set at work what would necessarily lead to "sacrifices". For may of them, strongly anxious as to take revenge on whatever has to do with the left, the government had, finally, decided to take it out on the "privileges" of state workers and any trade union that co-manages "La Secu" with the employers.
To get his project through, the government put forward the most alarmist figures of social welfare deficit (the famous "hole" of "La Secu"), and fingered out the "special systems" of state workers pension that are more advantageous than the general system. By doing so, the government wished to focus the attention on these pretended privileged sections to get the whole reform through, though it meant a threat to a social decline for al.
This was not the first reform of "La Secu" we were witnessing. Rocard, the latest socialist Prime Minister, had also instituted a reform along the line of Juppe's one. But the range of the new foretold steps are beyond everything done up to now.
Juppe's plan includes three sections:
1) The reduction of the sums due for the payment of pensions of hundreds of thousands of state wage earners, by extending the length of time during which they subscribe , and hence by increasing the number of years of labour.
Though possessors of advantages, due to the "special system", these workers would have to subscribe for as many years as the other sections, actually as those of the private sector (and in concrete figures, they would have to undergo a 37.5 to 40 years change in subscription). Introduced as a socially just decision, such a disposition merely expresses a bottom lining up of pension conditions for all wage earners, no matter to which, private or public sector, they belong. Responding to anyone tempted to bring on this difference, the strikers put forward the "37.5 years for all" demand. In other words, they expressed their will to see the conditions of retirement lined up to the top.
The sections of 40-year-old and less workers are particularly sensitive to this question. If, on the whole, their elders have worked at less tiresome workplaces by the end of their professional careers, the former, may not have as much hope for themselves. All the sections of workers are suffering flexibility in working time, higher and higher rates, and living under the continuous threat of unemployment, and so on. This aims to increase the intensity of labour such as to enable capital, in spite of the crisis, to maintain the maximum rate of profit. On the other hand, all these terms result in more stressing working conditions, hence meaning a faster and a deeper wearing out of the labour force. This daily lived reality by millions of labourers is testified by numerous inquires on the stress due to work. It ends up in the increase of nervous troubles (insomnia, feeling of constant weariness, etc.). Thus, a very high degree in so-called "comfort" drug consumption (tranquillisers, stimulants, etc.). In return, and as regards medical consumption, this reality is fingered out as a proof of squander (!) for which the workers were to be liable. It is, therefore, significant why the workers are strongly opposed to the extension of the number of years of labour, which ends up in reducing their life expectancy, especially for those who are compelled to tedious and dangerous jobs. (This was precisely acknowledged through the existence of their "special system" of pension). Their life expectancy is already shortened compared to other socio-professional sections (executives, liberal professions, etc.).
The second aspect of this question deals with unemployment. A mechanical consequence in extending the number of years of labour happens to be the cutting-down in hiring new labour forces, that is, the rise in the mass of jobless young people. Such is the logic of the system that likes to impel those who have a hob to ever more harder conditions of labour, whereas the mass of the jobless expands. That was why the workers on strike were convinced that they were fighting not only for them, but at the same time, for the youths in search of a job. This feeling was widely shared by the people and expressed the profound fondness that the social movement had gained.
2) The reduction of the amount of money due for the repayment of health expenses through withdrawal and/or cutback of certain allowances. It is but a worsened "rationing policy" of health care, that has been lead for many years. The heart of the instituted mechanism lays in defining the yearly amount of repayment that "La Secu" carries out. The evolution of health expenses, at least those that are subject to a repayment by "La Secu", will then be framed. The goal is to cut down the part of the social wealth that is devoted to this sector.
The parliament is due to fix this financial frame and make sure that it is applied. The obligation to actually consider the Maastrich Treaty criteria of convergence is expressed at that level. This new parliament-distrusted duty has urged a reform of the Constitution.
Is this a democratic progress, as it is pretended by the partisans of such a policy, who portray parliamentary institution as the summon of bourgeois democracy? In the system of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, experience demonstrates that Parliament is but a recording house where the executive corps, as representative and defender of the interests of big money, takes up decisions. This reform is aimed to guarantee the state of the management of a budget valued up at as much as the 1 000 billion franc budget of the state itself. The crisis sharpens (emphasises) financial oligarchical greed for all capital. As such this capital is particularly attractive to the head managers of "La Secu". Juppe's reform enables big money owners to capitalise these funds such as to offer them a financial tenfold increased striking force.
It was then necessary to reduce the strength of decion of labour union managing leaders inside the executives of "La Secu". The treatment of such considerable amounts of money and all sorts of advantages drawn out from this co-management have had an essential part in political, ideological and finally economical integration of "labour aristocracy" in the imperialist system. However, in a period of sharp crisis, these "advantages" tend to melt. As every type of capital must exclusively be kept ready for financial oligarchy, less crumbs are left for feeding the "labour aristocracy". Through this "stateisation" of social welfare, we are then attending the economical and political reinforcement of the monopolies dealing in health and social welfare.
To measure the stake that the control taking constitutes over this massive quantity of capital, one should only look at what has been happening these last years in the USA where private insurance and retiring pension fund companies manage the essential of social protection. As one news reporter of the daily paper "Le Monde" has written: "the retiring pension fund and the American mutual fund , the financial managers of retirement, possessed, in the early seventies, 25 % of Wall Street stock capitalisation. Along with financial deregulations of the early eighties, the behaviour of these institutional investors changes. In 1991 they possess from 40 up to 65 % of stock capitalisation." Besides, the Mexican monetary crisis that led millions of Mexicans to misery resulted from the displacement of these American retiring pension funds.
3)The last point deals with the opening of health and social protection market to private interests. Entrusting social protection as a whole to private interests is not the aim. It is but to advantageously state wide open "profitable" niches for them. This is the overall market of so-called complementary retiring pensions that are based on individual "capitalisation" of insurance that offers a social coverage based on ratios of the sums invested.
This development towards "personalised social protection" relies on the principle according to which the rich are not to pay for the poorer. It acts inside the financing mechanisms that are being set up, such as the new-born tax that is supposed to pay off the accumulated debt of Social Welfare. This new tax (named RDS -reimbursement of social debt) is calculated on a whole proportional basis (in this case 0.5 % of the income), unlike the income tax which is still (less and less though) evaluated on a "progressive" basis. The line of separation being that proportional taxes, as all indirect taxes (for instance, VAT, taxes on tobacco and alcohol, etc., taxes that bring already in a lot more than income taxes) happen to weigh much more on low rather than on high incomes. Acting as substitutes for social impositions, these fiscal deductions based on proportionality form one of the foundations of the tax reform in gestation. They will lead to a situation where, in proportion, the richest will be less imposed than the poorest. These different elements illustrate the content of Chirac's "social" policy. Far from solving "social break-off", it will, instead, only stress further social disparities.
According to evaluations made by different institutes, the entire set of measures contained in the "Juppe Plan" consist of a transfer of something like 100 billion francs from workers' pockets to capital. Such a reform, now that government and employers keep on calling for goods consumption, is but a violent measure that will worsen the absolute pauperisation of the people and lessen as much their capacities to "consume". The reason for such incoherence are to be investigated among the insuperable contradictions acting inside the capitalist system. The capitalists would indeed like to see the popular masses "buy" consumption goods, however, at the same time the race for maximum profit generates more unemployment, lowering of real wages, and so forth... The fierce competition that the imperialists are leading against each other for markets in South-East Asia, in the Near and Middle East, in the Pacific area, etc. ends in restructuring and rationalising plans in imperialist centres through intensifying the rhythms of production, through severe flexibility of the work force whose qualifications keep on improving in spite of the fact that they are not acknowledged and paid consequently. It is along this line that the movement of rejection of the "Juppe plan" fits in with a larger dismissal of the so-called unavoidable consequences of "world-wide" economy.
Several times, Juppe complained that the demonstrators had not read correctly his project. He is right along one point. When they undertook the struggle, few strikers had read the programme in detail. Still, all of them understood immediately that was a matter of wide offensive against the social assets of all the popular masses.
Such a broad and rich social movement could not be summed up in a few lines. We want to draw out its most important and most significant features such as to further develop class struggle.
In this movement, the working class was indeed at the head of the mobilisation, particularly the workers in the transport sector. It brought back again to memory not only its existence but its decisive significance too, both on the economical level through paralysing part of the production, of which transports constitute one of the branches, and equally on the social and political level. Actually, its class interests based unity and its determination in standing up for them were the elements that led the other sections of the workers, youth, unemployed, and so on, to join the mobilisations. These unity and determination were expressed along the solid lines of demonstrators. This was the first time in years that "overalls" were seen at the head of ready to fight demonstrations, that were timed through drums made up of workshop abandoned cans. Were also seen labourers on the way to a teachers' general meeting, ready to talk and convince still hesitating teachers as to the demand to be put ahead, and a little scared by the utmost feature of the requirement for the withdrawal of Juppe's programme. Others were seen in the midst of clarifying their movement to university and high school students, to people working in the cultural field, to intellectuals, and so forth.
The transport sector workers have hence launched the movement. They form large groups of the working class. Opposite to observable tendency in other productive branches, they witness a rise in their labour strength. Transport and communication fields are indeed a key element for the capitalist system under the new conditions of both home and international competition. In today's "societes a flux tendus", a tight net of means of transportation and communication is necessary as they turn out to become themselves a stake of monopolies lively competition for their control and profit realisation. The criteria of capitalist profitability question the validity of both social assets of these categories of workers, seldom recorded as under a specific status, as well as the idea of public service to which these same workers and popular users still feel attached.
For the rail workers, Juppe's programme of abandoning their specific system of pension added to a wider programme of the rail reorganisation (the new "contract of the SNCF"). A map of the future railroad network was published. Comparing the existing network to the expected one shows that a whole series of rail lines running in less inhabited and, from the commercial point of view, less profitable areas are doomed to disappear. The convergence of interest amongst the rail workers and the users in refusing this programme was obvious. Drawing lessons from their 1986 strike where they were the sole actors and from which they had relatively obtained very little in spite of several weeks of railroad transportation jamming, this time, the train drivers fetched for the other working sections of the railroad public company and got in touch with the "metro" drivers, hence aiming to widen the movement. One of the drivers ends up saying: "First, I regarded myself as a rail driver. Then I felt as a "cheminot" (slang expression for rail worker), and finally I considered myself as a labourer."
The struggle was aimed at fixing its inner slogan, namely the demand of the plain and simple withdrawal of Juppe's plan. Indeed, this requirement had not been put on right away. It meant an important progress of awareness of both the necessity to surpass corporatism (thus not to strike to the single question that deals with the reform of the specific systems of pension) and the necessity of breaking off with conciliatory positions, with the search of compromises at all cost, that the reformists cherish. The struggle was fought against by those who were in favour of a reform that they consider "unavoidable". They directed their critics against the brutal method with which Juppe wanted to impose the reform rather than against the content of his policy. Such was the position of the different trends of social democracy, particularly the Socialist Party which holds on to its image of a "responsible" government party. On the labour union level, the position expressed by the "CFDT" was that which had been, throughout the movement, the most openly and resolutely favourable to Juppe's government. A different way of fighting the workers struggle consisted in mixing the demands inside a more global platform of demands, "such that, supposedly, everyone may find his way through". This ends back in trying to split up the movement even before it is able to take shape, and finally isolate the more mobilised sections of the working masses. As such, the attempt fortunately failed in front of the potency of the movement that was setting off, hence getting closer and closer to each other all the public sector grades of workers (mail, telecom, electricity and gas -EDF-GDF-, but also tax, education and health sectors, etc.).
Soon arouse the question dealing with the involvement of private companies' workers in the struggle. The more conscious activists, the workers most engaged in fighting longed for widening the movement. They displayed numerous efforts to reach this goal. Yet, union militants and rank and file labourers had to overcome more than one difficulty. Some, and not the least, are the result of the objective situation that prevails for years in the private sector; that is the cuts in the number of wage earners, the liquidation of organised union roots that the employers realised for the benefit of restructuring plans and of serial redundancies, among which, obviously, those of the most fighting union or non-union workers were the priority. Besides, the number of precarious jobs (limited employment period contracts, so-called "stages", sort of professional practise periods, etc.) keeps on moving up, hence making more and more difficult, trade union association of large sections of workers, particularly the young ones. This reality does not, in itself, explain the weakness of the organised union movement which gathers together less than 10 % of all the wage earners. Such a rate is yet lesser in the private sector. On the other side and bound to their reformist policy, the union leaders experience the fact that the workers lack of confidence in them. We will not treat of this aspect in this article; however, it will be taken into account to measure the significance of the December 95 movement.
More than any others, the private sector activists were eager to have explanations for the actual consequences of Juppe's plan. The pressure that they bore from their employers aiming to dissuade them from joining the movement was quite hard. In addition to the blackmails with the threats of firing them (according to the well known employers' thesis that a strike movement ends up in signing the death of the company) there was the propaganda that pretended that only public employees and workers were concerned by the movement. Now, the explanations have failed to reach them on time. This question raises the general problem of the leadership of the movement. Indeed, and from the start, this movement was mainly spontaneous. It was not the result of the call of one or more trade unions. It did spring from the rank and file workers. Such is, in the last ten years, the feature of most of the larger opposition movements. However, once launched, the movement generally expects from the trade unions that they put al their means in the service of the up going struggle, much at the level of the union militants than at that of the concrete tools of propaganda and co-ordination. Thus, the relation developed between the movement and the trade unions is of a pragmatic nature. During the December movement, the basic workers have not limited their initiatives to the sole "setting up", they endeavoured to widen the movement to the other sections of workers and to search for the greatest support. A lot of contacts between different sectors in struggle have been made, meetings were organised inside striking stations, delegations of strikers went to factories to explain the meaning of their struggle. The militants took up and organised such initiatives in industrial areas, in the cities, wherever the workers had the ability to keep best control over their movement. The almost daily demonstrations that gathered more and more people together each day, offered the means of evaluating the potent uprise of the mobilisations. In other words, hundreds of initiative actions occurred simultaneously and everywhere on the basis of the same demands. Yet, one thing became clear very quickly: among the trade union leadership that supported the movement, none wanted it to start off the frame of protest and feature a more political turn. The same thing happened at the head of the PCF. Its national secretary, R. Huc, clearly assessed that neither the PCF nor social democracy, its governing standing partner, were ready to introduce themselves as a political alternative. But the revisionist and reformist leaders did not content themselves with this acknowledgement, they acted consciously to maintain the class struggle inside the limits of the bourgeois system.
The remarkable point is that the majority of the most conscious workers and militants (including even activists of these reformist parties) knew quite well that these political forces were unwilling to take on a political crisis and, moreover, that they were incapable to do so. Hence, and far from leaving this" political vacuum" paralyse them, they, themselves, handled the movement from beginning to end. If the movement did nor go "farther", up to the direct confrontation against the government, that is on the political field, the reason comes not from the fact that the most conscious and active individuals refused to do so, but from the fact that they were aware of its objective and subjective self limitations. Somehow, they progressed as far as they could, enthusiastically experiencing the power of collective actions and solidarity, feeling downdeep that they were carrying a just struggle for the whole of the popular strata.
The population tool on the consequences of the bus and train strike with no blame whatsoever against the strikers; actually the opposite occurred! Every attempt to set up demonstrations of "angry users" ended up to be ridiculous. It is obvious that the great "All together" slogan of December 95, which continues to be the cry of rallying in present day struggles, is not a matter of chance.
The question is, therefore, not much to know "why the movement has not progressed further", as those who believe that the history of the labour movement is already written tend to do; the question is more on the level of observing what point it reached up, where it did progress and how much revolutionary potential it has shown.
As it has already been noted, the workers took on themselves to make their struggle, and the reasons of their strike, known to each other. We can talk of a higher degree in self organisation of the workers and of their battle. This was a great experience for the masses as they gained back confidence in their capacity to act together and overcome the difficulties. In our point of view, it illustrates a new and higher degree in breaking off with the institutions, with the parties and the people who make them operate and who have nothing to propose but "an other politics" inside this system, and, on the whole, with the reformism in government action that we had witnessed for more than ten years in France. For an increasing number of workers today, it is plain that the alternative will not spring "from the top" neither be materialised without them, but with them . Thus a close attention to anyone who pulls up the debate on the field of social transformation (change).
They have also gained back confidence in the capacity of workers of other countries to support them in solidarity. It has been a long time since we have not seen in our country so many delegations from different European countries offer their political and material support directly to the struggling labourers.
The fundamental questions that the movement has brought to light are, at last, the rejection of the choices and the criteria that are imposed by present day society, of the logic of profitability regardless of men and of fierce competition... It has, however, not only accused capitalist society, but also set afore values, aspirations and practice that the communists and the revolutionaries identify to those of socialism. In other words, and after the long period of ideological hammering about the absolute triumph of capitalism and the death of the working class, this movement brings about the matter of factly questions around the alternatives to capitalism, and renewed discussions about the positive and negative points of socialist experience. This movement has stirred the hearts of every stratum of society. We witnessed the formation of camps, including the intellectual components of society. This is the first time, since long ago, that they have been numerous to take side in favour of the movement, while they saluted, as many of them stated, "the come back of the proletariat". Such progressive positions prove that the working class is able to drain these components in its battles for emancipation, when it fights and thus stresses its load on society.
For many of those who were active during this fight, it was hard to get back to work. The speed at which the working class occurs is different. On the other side, be it by the government, the bosses or the reformists, everything is done to make is as if nothing happened and as if the routine overwon. The advantages gained along this movement do not rank essentially at the level of the back-steps, though real, that the government had to accomplish, especially for the pension status. We are no fools, because it will try again to realise its project by way of other means.
April 1996
Workers Communist Party of France (PCOF)